Robert Rector: How the War on Poverty Was Lost

Fifty years and $20 trillion later, LBJ's goal to help the poor become self-supporting has failed.

By

Robert Rector

Jan. 7, 2014 6:36 p.m. ET

On Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson used his State of the Union address to announce an ambitious government undertaking. "This administration today, here and now," he thundered, "declares unconditional war on poverty in America."

Fifty years later, we're losing that war. Fifteen percent of Americans still live in poverty, according to the official census poverty report for 2012, unchanged since the mid-1960s. Liberals argue that we aren't spending enough money on poverty-fighting programs, but...